Primrose always in bloom before Christmas. Soft mauve or pink, perhaps crossed by pollination between wild primrose and a jolly polyanthus. Compared to the latter, they seem better at resisting flower-munching animals. Treasured perennials, their modest colour suits the wild garden and the short-lasting flowers will keep appearing for months, even through snow. Calendars reach the the longest night, the year's darkest mood and I get overwhelmed by despair at the depleted farmland and neighbouring hedgerow destruction, feeling it as shock, especially on all the bird flocks. The first frosts mute colours of leaves everywhere and most of the uncut vegetation collapses into the visual equivalent of a lament. Permaculture values this cyclical decay for the topsoil and asks that we let it remain, for insulation and enrichment. I find special plants, the mosses, ferns and lichens, offer a thread outward from this winter labyrinth. Here the air is still pure enough for them to survive.

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Incredible detail and tenacity of tiny plantlife on stonework

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Village churchyard has been very thoroughly colonised over centuries, sometimes in surprising colours.

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Spleenwort, Asplenium Ruta-muraria withstanding full roar from the Atlantic just beneath high window of our village church.Still grateful to my mother for buying me, in 1966, the tenderly illustrated Oxford Book Of Flowerless Plants.

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Wiry elegance in wintertime: a high lookout post above churchyard for the beech tree posse of jackdaws. The way branches maintain tension in prevailing conditions leads to interesting three-dimensional designs, familiar as palm-prints on our skyline.

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Violent winds have blown down some spectacular lichens and liverworts.

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Oaks alongside the track support rich varieties, in colours of weathered copper, but I must share them with you by photographing them at once, because they soon get brittle, as seaweed does away from its element.

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Blessings on someone long ago who planted these pine trees. For decades we have benefited from their presence.

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Right near the trees, a much-loved timber footbridge. Starry mosses thrive here where there is always moisture and shady shelter.

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Decorative polypodies accumulate along branches, wherever bark crevices hold water and moss collects. See the way fern stalks trap dead leaves, to decay into nutrients in turn creating tiny worlds of more habitat populated with small creatures. It's a slowly woven fabric of countless details, taking opportunities and adapting – truly a life and death balance.